Islington Council

With over 25,000 properties in their portfolio, and despite having an adequate system in place, Islington Council recognised there was potential to simplify processes and reduce inefficiencies. With Oneserve's help, the Council has been able to completely eradicate paperwork and maintain high customer satisfaction levels.

The Challenge

Islington Council maintain over 25,000 properties, providing a wide range of frontline services to their residents. Historically, Islington relied upon contractors to complete this work, but the majority of works were brought back in-house in 2012.

During this process, the Council inherited the systems and processes of the main contractor they previously used. These systems were sufficient to maintain services, but the Council recognised there was potential to simplify processes and reduce inefficiencies. They therefore embarked on a project to introduce service management software to manage their service delivery.

The Solution

Islington carried out a detailed procurement process and
Oneserve was selected as the most suitable software. With
extensive experience working with social housing providers,
we brought to the table a unique insight of the successes, and learnings, of other Local Authorities that have a DLO (Direct Labour Organisation). In fact it was this partnership approach that was particularly attractive to Islington during the procurement process.

We were able to offer advice and worked very closely with Islington to ensure their service management solution perfectly supported their growing needs and helped them to meet their ongoing targets.

Islington Council has been operating with a fully insourced
workforce since 2014, with Oneserve by their side since 2017. All of their processes are now automated through the use of software. Oneserve schedules and manages every job, enabling all 190 operatives to access and record their jobs via their mobile device.

Meanwhile, the 340 desktop users have complete visibility of the entire service delivery process, enabling them to schedule jobs at a click of a button, answer customer queries with ease and easily measure the costs assigned to each job.

“Being involved in future software developments is very valuable to us. We are able to help shape Oneserve to ensure our service management solution delivers what we need, both today and in the future.”

Anthony Jonas, Project Manager - Islington Council

The Results

Increased efficiencies

Oneserve has enabled Islington Council to completely eradicate paperwork. All job details are now held in Oneserve and accessible to anyone who needs them, from site addresses to the parts used on a job. By improving job management and increasing visibility, Islington Council has been able to dramatically cut out inefficiencies. As Anthony Jonas, Islington’s Project Manager explains, the increased visibility has also improved their first time fix rates, “One of our greatest challenges in the past was meeting our first-time fix rates for out of hours jobs. Now that we have Oneserve, our out of hours first-time fix rate is 97%.”

Improved customer satisfaction

Tenant satisfaction is a prominent focus for Islington Council. Thanks to optimised scheduling and a streamlined process, the Council has surpassed their customer service satisfaction target of 88%. Anthony explains, “Our current satisfaction rate is 91% which is a clear indication that we are now delivering a better service.”

Greater adaptability

One of the greatest assets of any system is its flexibility to adjust to changing needs and demands. Oneserve has been built to enable just this. As Islington uncover an inefficiency within their process, they can amend the set-up of the system themselves. Anthony expands on this further, “The adaptability of Oneserve is invaluable. Whenever we need to make a tweak to our processes, we can do so directly ourselves. This immediacy and simplicity really works for us.”

Simpler scheduling

With 125,000 jobs processed every year, scheduling was a huge burden on the administration team. Since implementing Oneserve, Anthony says, “Oneserve has transformed the way we manage our jobs. It is so simple; for the majority of jobs, Oneserve will schedule the appointment and automatically find the best resource and appointment date, without us having to do anything. Furthermore, via our planned maintenance programme, Oneserve automatically generates hundreds of planned jobs every month without the need for any human interaction.”

Easy adoption

As new members of staff join the team, they quickly get up and running courtesy of Oneserve’s simple interface. Anthony explains that, “We manage all training for new starters ourselves because Oneserve is so simple to use, enabling staff to easily learn on the job.”

Ongoing partnership

As a SaaS (Software as a Service) product, Oneserve is constantly being developed and updated to ensure our client partners benefit from the latest tools and technological advances. We involve our client partners throughout this process to ensure Oneserve matches their needs and requirements moving forward. Anthony explains, “Being involved in future software developments is very valuable to us. We are able to help shape Oneserve to ensure our service management solution delivers what we need, both today and in the future.”

Current customer satisfaction rate is 91%

Hundreds of planned jobs every month, automatically scheduled by Oneserve

Out of hours first-time fix rate is 97%

“We generate hundreds of planned jobs every month, which are automatically scheduled by Oneserve without the need for any human interaction.”